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Re: About "standardization"

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2021-03-13 19:57

McDonalds Eater wrote:

> I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I feel like there's been
> an unwritten standardization in everything clarinet related:
> the sound, equipment, interpretation, etc.
>
Are you limiting this to everything clarinet-related because you're posting on a clarinet board? To the extent the issues you raise are valid, they surely apply across the "classical music" domain and, realistically, beyond even music.

> Let's start with equipment. I'm sure this has happened to most
> of us: you are about to upgrade/get a new clarinet and the
> first brand that comes up in the conversation is Buffet. And
> then you spend the majority of the talk thinking about Buffet.

Actually, when I was doing graduate study, my teacher was developing and trying to help market the Selmer 10G, so I heard almost nothing from him about Buffet. Yes, Buffet was an accepted "standard" here in Philadelphia 50 years ago. Some here still play Buffets, but there are so many different ones that it's hard to call any one model a "standard." I've heard a lot here on the BBoard and in local groups about Yamaha clarinets, Selmers, Backuns, Ridenours and now Eubels. It depends on the company you keep. Maybe yours is strongly Buffet-oriented. If you ask a sales clerk at a music store, who may or may not be a clarinetist, you may be hearing the manufacturer's name that offers the biggest dealer discounts.

> Maybe occasionally other brands get mentioned there. Maybe some
> of you got told that Buffet was the only way to go. Maybe some
> of you got told that the other brands are bad simply because
> "they aren't Buffets." Pretty much same thing with Vandoren. At
> least this was my experience.

As far as Vandoren is concerned, there was a time within my memory, though probably not within yours, when there were less than a handful of nationally distributed reed brands to choose from. There were Vandoren, LaVoz, Olivieri, a couple of Selmer models and student-oriented models like Rico and Symmetricut. Whatever Vandoren cult grew up is rooted in that period. But then Rico started making reeds aimed at more demanding playing levels, I think starting with Luries, then the Grand Concert models, and gradually so many brands with multiple models came onto the market that all I've really ever heard over the last 15 years or so is how awful Vandorens are and how much more consistent, long-lived, responsive and better sounding any number of alternatives are. So, I don't know how far back your experience goes, but it sounds like you came up in a heavily Buffet/Vandoren-oriented clarinet community that IMO has become less typical of the clarinet universe over the past two or three decades.

> One of my friends at a summer festival told me a story about
> his teacher (who shall not be named but is pretty famous). He
> was telling me that his teacher would criticize Ricardo Morales
> for being a "disgrace" to the clarinet world, that his playing
> mechanics are "different and wrong," and that the way he plays
> will turn the clarinet world into a bad direction. Yet, Ricardo
> is THE most successful player in terms of winning auditions and
> his students have also been widely successful.

Morales represents a fairly drastic change of musical style and tone concept from the players who preceded him. If this teacher was a Philadelphia based player, his criticism is understandable in its context, though calling Morales's playing a "disgrace" is clearly over the top and objectively an over-reaction. In any case, it was an individual situation.

> I told my friend
> that he sounded like he's just straight up jealous, but he
> mentioned that his teacher would talk frequently about playing
> clarinet "the correct and only way." It's one thing to not like
> someone's playing--that's normal. But calling someone "bad"
> simply because their concept is different is just childish.
>

I can probably guess from this and your last paragraphs who the teacher was, and if I've guessed right, there was more background and history involving the teacher and Morales that made the animosity personal and that your friend would not have understood. The remark as stated was not a widely held opinion, though many players who came up in the Philadelphia/Curtis area did - still do - criticize aspects of Morales's playing, just as people criticize most other well-known, heavily recorded players on any instrument. If anything, that's a strong counter example to your premise - there are as many different opinions as there are serious players.

> Then comes interpretation. I'm sure all of us in a masterclass
> have been told or heard to "play it this way" or "this is the
> only "correct" way to play this composer." Or maybe you get
> stopped every two bars because you're not playing the teacher's
> interpretation. That leaves me with this question: If there is
> a "correct" way of playing things, then how in the hell am I
> supposed to find my "inner voice" or my own interpretation?

A given teacher's attitude toward reading specific music examples may well be that teacher's idea of "correct interpretation." All you can do is accept it as such, that it represents an approach that has worked successfully for that teacher. It doesn't need to be *your* ideal. Many successful performers are highly opinionated about "right" and "wrong." But, again, the diversity of opinions you can easily hear manifested in any selection of recordings you listen to argues that the problem isn't "standardization" in your terms, it's that we all start somewhere and, once we've grown enough to take on some independence, we need to realize it and begin to question what we already "know."

> I also wonder about competitions and auditions. Obviously a
> winner would be the one who plays the best. But what exactly
> makes someone the "best"? Is it the player who played the
> composers in the most "correct" way or is it the player who
> found their inner voice and interpretation in the pieces? For
> me, the latter.
>

The "winner" depends on the audition rules, the judges and the purpose of the audition. No audition, with its limits on time and musical content, can really pick the "best" player. Whether you should play the printed music as literally as possible or give it the most personal spin you can conjure in your imagination depends on what the audition rules are, what the judges are listening for and what is going to be expected of the player who is chosen. If you're talking about high school local and state ensemble auditions, they're a whole class of auditions that deserve their own place in Hell. :-)

> I personally hate the fact that a lot teachers frame a "playing
> box" and that you can only play inside it. That was at least my
> case. More and more I would hate the fact that I couldn't play
> the way I wanted to, and instead was turning into a robot.
>

You play inside the "box" when playing for that teacher in order to avoid conflict, or you play inside it because you actually respect the constraints. But then, as you grow, you always have the ability to try out different "boxes" and find the things inside that you're comfortable with and ignore the rest. Some teachers are more flexible in their approach, some are more rigid. To an extent, you choose which type of instruction you want. You can make a different choice if the first one is not compatible with your expectations. But in any case, this again argues against the idea that there is a universal "standard" to which you must conform to be a successful player. There are too many different teachers with different approaches and mindsets to allow for any standardization beyond basics like playing in tune and playing the right notes with correct rhythm. And even these are only "standards" in the realm of notated, deliberately composed music.

> I like that more people are branching in all aspects. We're
> starting to see more clarinets played other than Buffet. Young
> talent from around the world are pushing the boundaries in
> musical interpretation. But in my opinion, there's still
> standardization.
>
You're entitled to your opinion. But I would counter that this isn't an especially recent development. In terms of equipment - the Buffet/Vandoren imperative - you've only just begun to notice its dissolution, either because you're too young to have seen it 20 or 30 years ago and haven't been out of *your "box"* long enough to have seen it before, or because something has only recently motivated you to look beyond the boundaries in which you developed. Either way, it's an exciting awakening, isn't it?

> My inspiration from writing this post was learning about the
> Philadelphia Orchestra oboe audition in 2019 and the uproar it
> caused in the oboe world. If you don't know about this, just
> ask any of your oboe friends and they will instantly know and
> tell you about it.

Well, it caused an uproar among certain elements of the orchestra's woodwind section, which had more to do with how long it took to choose a replacement for Woodhams, the retiring Principal Oboist, than it did with any uproar in the oboe world at large. The players have a vested interest in who is hired to lead each section.

Karl

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